Amph Engage! The Star Trek: TNG General Discussion

I guarentee nothing I write in this post will have anything anywhere near as great as JediMarine's last post, so I'll just have to salute the show in the best way I can- with a ton of images!

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TNG 725/726: All Good Things...
-Premise: Picard is mysteriously traveling back and forth through time, thanks to Q, and he is unwittingly to blame for the destruction of Humanity. (Series Finale)

-T2Q Comments: Q fittingly returns again (though it's a shame the opening credits have to spoil the various guest stars like him)- and time travel, huzzah!

Ha, must be from having watched First Contact & Nemesis so often, but it took a long while during the vineyard conversation for me to realize Geordi didn't have his VISOR on- or even (distinguishable) cybernetic implants. So, Geordi married Leah afterall (I have to assume her unseen husband stood no chance against the collected desire of fandom ).

Interesting to note that this flashback with Tasha is set previous to even the first scene of the pilot (as are several of the related scenes that occur subsequently), with the beginning of a shuttle-approach sequence akin to TMP & TWOK (albeit abrievated).

Damn does Data have a lot of cats- Spiner musta loved that.

I'm not surprised that the Man-Skirt isn't present in the flashbacks, or that Deanna's hair and makeup, while similar, isn't as awful. Also interesting that these "past" events play out more or less like they "really" did, as Picard hadn't changed them until he calls red alert.

The slip of giving Worf instructions instead of Tasha is one of my favorite little moments. I am also amused that they circumvent the lack of a central chief engineer in the first season by using Miles.

Showing Riker's distraction at Worf/Deanna at least softens one portion of my infinite hatred of Insurrection by showing that at least Riker/Troi wasn't completely restarted out of the blue.

So glad they at least pursued the Picard/Crusher relationship some more before series end. And they kiss! horray!

The Klingons take over the Romulan Empire- that's quite fitting, and I can't help but wonder if the alternate-future loss of Romulus (and some events in Countdown) might accelerate that outcome...

I dig the revised Starfleet logo seen on the transmission screen- I'd like to see that come to actually use eventually. Mention of Romulus st

 

The Klingon/Romulan thing is curious- I have to assume the Klingons simply have greater numbers. We know from the one episode that 2 or 3 birds of prey can take out a warbird in a standoff. And if it came down to hand to hand combat I don't think there's any doubt who'd win in those encounters.

Admiral Riker I think is mean to be a warning of what Riker could become following the rift between him and Worf and Deanna's passing. And they have done a whole series of Titan novels (which included the fan contest to submit the "official" design of the ship as well). I have one or two left over from my store that I'll probably read one day, but I haven't gotten to them yet.

From what I've read, I believe Q's comments about the Continuum are supposed to indicate that they ordered him to create the anomoly as a test/trial through Picard.

 

I don't think they were trying to imply the whole show was the test- Q evens states in one of the previous episodes that the "jury's still out" or what have you, which supports the "trial is ongoing" theme, but it's a background thing (and, obviously, Q wasn't in on that the whole time).

Speaking of Q- one of the mixed memories I had of the franchise was of the Continuum in civil war or something to that effect, which i thought was TNG, and thus was sorta expecting it and a tad perplexed when it didn't happen, but I guess it's Voyager, huh?

 

Of course, in commenting on the lack of Manskirts in the flashbacks, I made one oversight that I must correct now before I forget...

Manskirts: 4, Masculinity: 1





Ok, so, before I hit the series as a whole, I'll look back at my reviews/breakdown of Season 7 of TNG. Even though we're treating the episode as a whole, to help maintain similar ratios to most of the prior seasons, it'll count as two episodes.

TNG Season 7

Definitely Essential: (15)
701: Descent Part II
704: Gambit, Part I
705: Gambit, Part II
708: Attached
710: Inheritance
711: Parallels
712: The Pegasus
715: Lower Decks
716: Thine Own Self
718: Eye of the Beholder
720: Journey's End
721: Firstborn
724: Preemptive Strike
725/726: All Good Things...

Potentially Essential, But Not Necessarily Good: (0)
(however, I do count several episodes categorized otherwise as borderline Potentially Essential, so that's noted here)

Good Episodes, But Not Necessarily Essential: (5)
706: Phantasms
707: Dark Page
709: Force of Nature
713: Homeward
722: Bloodlines

Average Episodes: (6)
702: Liasons
703: Interface
714: Sub Rosa
717: Masks
719: Genesis
723: Emergence

OK Episodes: (0)

Forgettable: (0)

Trash: (0)


So, out of 26 episodes, the now-standard-season-length's 20 episodes worth of episodes Adds up to the stuff you either should see, or should consider seeing, 3/4ths of them being "essential" stories to the ongoing franchise or too damn good to pass up.

Compared to the previous seasons:

Season 1: 9 DE, 4 PE, 3 GE, 2 AE, 5 OK, 2 Forgettable, 1 Trash
Season 2: 5 DE, 1 PE, 6 GE, 2 AE, 2 OK, 3 Forgettable, 3 Trash
Season 3: 12 DE, 1 PE, 7 GE, 5 AE, 1 OK
Season 4: 16 DE, 1 PE, 5 GE, 4 AE
Season 5: 12 DE, 1 PE, 9 GE, 4 AE
Season 6: 16 DE, 1 PE, 7 GE, 2 AE


And, for those wantinga reminder of what I ranked Trash and Forgettable (essentially, the bottom 9 worst episodes:

Trash:
-103: The Naked Now
-218: Up the Long Ladder
-219: Manhunt
-222: Shades of Grey

Forgettable:
-104: Code of Honor
-114: Angel One
-201: The Child
-205: Loud As a Whisper
-212: The Royale



Next, I'll look back and pick out some of the cream of the crop- the best episodes of the series/my favorites, ignoring the need for related "essential" backstory episodes or even the episode's actually essentialness.

My unthemed Fan Collective, if you will.

 

I've bene known to use it from time to time. Though not here. I track these Trek reviews in a .rtf file for each series. I make a heading for each classification, then make an entry for an episode (and, being the eternal optimist, i always start them under the Defnitely Essential category- it's up to them to determine if they get downgraded ) which tends to be my quick notes version of my thoughts as i watch the episode, add the trivia notes, then cut and paste it under the classification that was determined.

When I actually post the notes to these threads, I rewrite the quick notes thoughts to better present them more coherantly.

The final TNG file (including the AU and time travel logs) clocks in at 208k, is a little over 67 pages long and includes 35,366 words and 172,656 characters (not counting spaces).

Compared to my 24k TOS file... 8 pages and 3.453 words. I guess I just had a lot to say about TNG


As to actual analysis- so far as it pertains to the core purpose of this thread, it looks like one is pretty safe buying Seasons 3+ on DVD, as, on average, you'll get 19-21 Essential or Good episodes. The first two seasons, your mileage will vary more, with only about half or fewer episodes meeting that qualification (probably even less considering I probably went easy on a few of the early season episodes).

Sure, that's been more or less the common consensus on the subject, but it's nice to have semi-solid numbers to back that suggestion up.

 

Compiling your own Best Of collection would be my recommendation for 1 & 2

 

Generally, I agree- to see it once and experience the whole of the thing is a unique a fuflling one. But after that, there's simply going to be a crap load of episodes that you're not going to want to watch over again in normal viewing or for the purposes of watching a complete story arc- something compunded by the sheer volume of material in the Trek franchise.

It's one thing to rewatch a few movies over and over. But 28 seasons of TV? That's an incredible amount of time to view. To cull and trim out even just a third of that material makes it far more manageable and more accessible if you're introducing a series to someone else- and I've found that if they're not particularly sold on it something initially (which, given the tendancy for Trek shows to have relatively weaker-than-usual first and second seasons, can sometimes be difficult to overcome), trimming out the bad and focusing on the core stories and best episodes initially helps considerably.

I've long done the same for B5- narrowing the 1st season down to about 9 key episodes to help get people hooked (and the quicker you can get to The Coming of Shadows and other key Season 2 episodes, the quicker that outcome becomes more likely).

(Though, in B5's case, it's first season has the somewhat unique facet of being more enjoyable during your second viewing of the series to uncover all the hidden backstory hints and revealtions that were tucked away and undetectavle without knowledge of what was to come at hand.)


Anywho, at a glance, here's my Quest Collectives (ganted, some of these are guilty pleasures, but that's hard to avoid, no?):

Season 1:
The Best: Skin of Evil, Conspiracy
Best of the Best: Keep em both.

Season 2:
The Best: Elementary. Dear Data, A Matter of Honor, Q Who, The Emissary, Peak Performance
Best of the Best: Gotta keep Moriarty, the Borg and Riker's Klingon adventure. The others don't absolutely need to be sene, though Emissary is the better of those two.

Season 3:
The Best: The Ensigns of Command, Booby Trap, The Defector, Yesterday's Enterprise, Allegiance, Sarek, The Best of Both Worlds, Part I
Best of the Best: Ensigns is a guilty pleasure- it's here because of that awesome Picard moment at the end, really. But it can be culled. Likewise, Allegiance is also here for some Picard badassery towards the end. They're the only two on the lsit that aren't "Don't Miss" caliber. Booby Trap, Defector, Yesterday's Enterprise, Sarek and BOBW speak for themselves.

Season 4:
The Best: The Best of Both Worlds, Part II, Family, Brothers, Remember Me, The Wounded, Galaxy's Child, Nth Degree, Qpid, The Drumhead, Redemption I
Best of the Best: I can see trimming Brothers and Qpid (the latter is really there because of the "Not a Merry Man" line, to be honest ). Galaxy's Child isn't a spectacularly excellent episode, but unique enough, IMO, to warrant inclusion. Family is a great epilogue to the Borg two-parter, Remember Me is probably the best or second best Crusher episode, and super-Barclay is great.

Season 5:
The Best: Redemption II, Silicon Avatar, Disaster, Unification I, Unification II, A Matter of Time, Conundrum, Power Play, Cause and Effect, The First Duty, I, Borg, The Next Phase, The Inner Light.
Best of the Best: Even though I don't rank it's original appearance, the crystalline entity was most effective here. A Matter of Time can be trimmed, and maybe The Next Phase, but I think the others should be seen/provide notable variety. Disaster in particular is awesome, and I have a soft spot for Power Play.

Season 6:
The Best: Realm of Fear, Relics, True Q, Rascals, Chain of Command, part I, Chain of Command, part II, Ship in a Bottle, Face of the Enemy, Tapestry, Starship Mine, The Chase, Frame of Mind, Rightful Heir, Second Chances, Descent Part I
Best of the Best: Trim out Realm of Fear, Frame of Mind and maybe Rightful Heir and maybe True Q. Realm of Fear is a guilty pleasure. Chain of Command, Ship in a Bottle and Starship Mine definitely cannot be missed, though.

Season 7:
The Best: Descent Part II, Gambit, Part I, Gambit, Part II

 

I think the TOS cast DID blush on that one- there was definitely a quote from somebody (Takei? I forget) who mentioned their negative opinion of TNG during it's first season, I believe citing The Naked Now).


And I wouldn't call such endeavors "arrogant". What's important to major plotlines can generally be determined with a fair amount of neutrailty- it's the standalone and fringe episodes where personal preference plays more of a role.

There's certainly an appeal/audience/application for the "I suffered through this so you don't have to" approach to some things, IMO- particularly viewers who don't want to waste their time trudging through 2 seasons of weaker material just for the sake of completeness before getting to the good stuff (we'll call them "Koohii's" ).

(But then, I have a natural inclination towards editing and arranging stuff, be they films/video, episode/book lists, banners, etc )

I think it's only arrogrant if you're applying it to viewers who are willing to go through the whole series, because then you would be discarding their preference altogether.

 

I agree- that is a continuity error in the execution (though I suppose, as a possible retcon/technobabble excuse, it could be explained that the anti-time effect doesn't begin until the anomaly has formed to a certain point, thus it's initial formation creates an expansion that the future crew can witness, before it begins to go back in time- but then even that has it's problems).

 

Might as well post this in this thread, I figure:

I'm gonna guess this will be the G or H (then again, if the J is in the far future, G seems most plausible so there'd be more than 1 letter to fill in that span of time), as I would assume they'd save F for films/TV, should they ever return to the Prime Universe.